#Earthquake aftershocks spread on social media

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- When the ground starts shaking, the tweets pour in.

The 5.8-magnitude earthquake that struck near Washington, D.C., at 1:51 p.m. caused a rumble across the East Coast and within the social media realm. Within seconds, people took to Twitter for confirmation.

Trending topics included "5.8" and "Earthquake in DC" and "FELT IT." Twitter held up under the deluge -- its famous Fail Whale never appeared -- but its network slowed slightly. Five minutes after the quake hit, Twitter's average response time doubled from 2.16 seconds to 4.17 seconds, according to monitoring site AlertSite.

Social media users also took to Facebook. Right after the quake, "we saw the term 'earthquake' appear in status updates for nearly 3 million people on Facebook in the US," a Facebook representative told CNNMoney.